


I'm (Not) Alone

by My_King_And_Your_Lionheart



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Dialogue Light, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Keith (Voltron) Endures Emotional Pain, M/M, POV Third Person, Post Season 3 Episode 5 Shiro (Voltron) is a Clone, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Suicidal Thoughts, you cannot convince me otherwise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-04-23
Packaged: 2019-04-26 16:24:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14405958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/My_King_And_Your_Lionheart/pseuds/My_King_And_Your_Lionheart
Summary: The Galra may have mastered cloning, may have created a Shiro that's actually a spy, but they haven't mastered the uniquely human phenomenon of soulmates.Wherein Keith feels Shiro's pain until he doesn't, and Shiro knows how Keith says "I love you" without ever saying it at all, featuring Kolivan being a pretty good friend, and the team, but barely.





	I'm (Not) Alone

**Author's Note:**

> I know what y'all are thinking. Another soulmate AU from me? But tbh I've been struggling these past couple of days with my big bang piece for sheith bc it is so far AU that I felt I was losing the essence of the characters so I decided to warm up with a nice, closer to canon piece. I also really fricken love soulmate AUs like holy hell
> 
> Title from What You Own from RENT!
> 
> Unbeta'd, as always, so lmk if i fucked anything up too bad. Enjoy!!!

Keith and Shiro didn’t always know they were each other’s soulmates, no matter what the rest of the team says. It actually took them an embarrassingly long time, if they told you the truth. But Keith was used to getting the odd bruise or twinge here and there, and some of the sentences on Shiro’s body were in places he couldn’t see without three mirrors and a lot of contortion. They weren’t really sure until Shiro crashed down to Earth and Keith felt the rattling in his bones, and Keith told Shiro how good it was to have him back and Shiro traced where those words used to be on his right arm.

Everyone sees everyone else’s soul-marks when they suit up as a team for the first time. Hunk has a weird black mass going up his side and over his shoulders, where his soulmate will touch him for the first time. Pidge has two different colored eyes, one a light brown and the other a glowing blue. She isn’t sure which eye is actually hers, but if the way her brother looked is anything to go by, it isn’t the blue one. Lance’s mark isn’t visible, but he’s already told the team how he can’t see in many colors, but he can finally see in blue once he met his lion. 

Keith isn’t sure if the Alteans have soulmates, but he’s going to go with a solid no, if their curiosity is as sincere as it sounds. That said, he didn’t really appreciate how they kept pushing him to talk when he’d already talked about how he’d rather not. He gets that it must be cool for aliens who don’t have to deal with it, but he’s got scars that aren’t his and phantom limb pain for an arm he still has. His brain gets a little confused sometimes, about what’s actually his and what isn’t.

It doesn’t come up much, that Keith and Shiro are soulmates. It’s one of those accepted things, like how Lance will flirt with anything that moves, or that Hunk’s cooking is much better than Coran’s. It doesn’t come up again until Keith only stops screaming in pain long enough to sprint to the Black Lion’s cockpit to find his soulmate missing and he breaks down then and there. It doesn’t come up again until Shiro comes back, a little different, and a little worse for wear, and Keith can’t feel anything from him. 

He stubs his toe on the deck, Keith saw it, but there’s no matching throb in his foot that means that he and Shiro are still connected in their very souls. They hit the showers one day after an intense training session, and all of the words Keith had left on Shiro for years are missing. There’s not a hint of Keith’s shitty handwriting, not even a clue of how Keith tells Shiro he loves him without ever using those words. Lance is the one who brings it up, right before Keith leaves the team for the Blade. 

“Do you think something happened when he went missing?” Keith shrugs his shoulders, because he’s spent sleepless nights tossing and turning, thinking of why he and Shiro aren’t connected anymore. A year in the gladiator ring didn’t take Shiro from him, but some nameless force accomplished that in so little time. “I mean, people don’t just lose their soul-marks, even when they stop being soulmates with someone.” Lance must realize what he’s said, because he back peddles faster than Keith’s ever seen him do. “Not to say you guys aren’t soulmates anymore! It’s just, uh-”

“Lance.” He looks thankful at Keith’s interruption. “Shut up.” Lance sputters a little bit, but ultimately keeps his mouth shut at Hunk’s nudging. “I don’t know if we’re still soulmates.” Keith pauses, looking out at the stars from the main deck of the castle. “I hope we are. God, I hope we are.” He looks back at Lance, Hunk, and Pidge. “But we’re in the middle of a war. We’ll figure it out after we win.” 

So Keith joins the Blades, going on missions and getting closer to them. They don’t ask him about soulmates, but they never tell him to stop talking when he tells them stories, like that one time Matt kept singing the same song in the shower for three months before he realized it was his soul-song, and that somewhere out there, that song was his soulmate’s favorite. Two weeks before he dies, Regris traces the thin red line around Keith’s upper right arm and asks him where he got it. Kolivan stays up some nights with him, watching the universe pass by their ship, listening to stories of Shiro, and the first time the they realized they were real soulmates, and not just hoping they were. Keith listens in return when Kolivan talks about how Galra don’t have soulmates, not like humans do, but if they did, how Kolivan is pretty sure Antok was his. There are nights they mourn together, one hybrid who isn’t sure if his soulmate is still his, and one Galra who never had to question it, but can never have it again.

Pidge gets Matt back after a long time of searching, and Keith hugs him so tight that he’s a little surprised he didn’t crack any of Matt’s ribs. It’s not long after that that Keith accepts that he and Shiro really aren’t soulmates anymore, that something between them broke and can’t be fixed, and he flies his ship at the shield of a Galra warship, thinking about the words that used to be inked into Shiro’s skin like a prayer, the love Keith has for him written out over muscle and bone, the love that Keith still has for him, but has to keep to himself. He hasn’t felt Shiro’s pain in months. He never thought he’d miss it.

Matt finds him, after. After. That’s a word Keith is using a lot to describe his life, right now. After. Keith thinks it’s still better to be thinking of the After than the Before. The Before hurts too much, especially because he seems to be the only one still thinking about it. Either way, Matt finds him, and holds him so tightly that Keith feels every ache in his body, but they’re only his hurts, and that sends him into a whole other mess that he can’t process right now, not when he almost died, not when he still wants to.

Matt has to let go, eventually, and when he does, Kolivan is there, ready to tear into Keith about his reckless behavior, but Kolivan takes one look at him, puts an arm around his shoulders, and takes him back to the base. They spend that night looking at the stars, and Kolivan asks Keith what he’d hoped to achieve. Keith can’t answer him, doesn’t really know what he’d been trying to do other than feel something. Kolivan sits a little closer to him until they are pressed against each other along one side and even the hood of the uniform can’t hide Keith’s tears. They don’t talk again, until Kolivan asks for a story. Keith tells him how sometimes, even though he isn’t her pilot anymore, Keith can feel the hits the Red Lion takes like a cold imprint along his ribs, nothing like the sharp agony of Shiro’s pain, but a soulmate connection all the same.

Keith doesn’t feel anything from Shiro until he does, and, oh, how he does. It starts as a tingling along his skin, until he’s screaming because his insides are being grabbed by invisible hands and twisted, and he’s being remade and torn apart a million times. It’s a good thing he’s not on a mission, because his cover would be blown for sure. No, he’s sitting in the Blade equivalent of a kitchen, drinking space hot chocolate and missing his team. The pain barely subsides before he’s being pinged by the castle.

“Keith.” It’s Matt’s voice, and one he hasn’t heard in weeks. It kind of sounds like he’s crying. “Keith, Shiro is back.” Through the residual pain, Keith takes a moment to wonder when the hell Shiro had left. “You need to get here, now.” The communication device beeps with the end of Matt’s call, and Keith takes a moment to breathe. The pain is sharp in the way unexpected pain still is, even after the source stops. Keith needs to find a way to the castle, needs to find a way to a man he didn’t even know was missing.

He runs to a hangar, only to find Kolivan there already, with a ship waiting.

“I was just coming to the food space when you received your call. I assumed, correctly it seems, that you would want to leave at once.” And Keith can’t help it, he throws his arms around Kolivan in a hug, dragging the tall Galra down to be a little closer to his level. Kolivan doesn’t move his arms at first, but that’s fine, because Keith is already pulling away to launch himself into the pilot’s seat. “Do you even know where you’re going?” And Keith has to stop, because, no, he doesn’t. Should’ve thought about that, actually. “I will fly.” Keith lets Kolivan get in the pilot’s chair, and sits in the next chair over, running pre-flight checks. “You will be with your soul-half soon.”

It’s only about forty minutes before the pair of them reach the castle, and Keith wasn’t expecting the welcome party in the hangar, but like hell he’s complaining. The two Shiro’s standing next to each other do give him pause, though. Why the hell are there two of them?

“Keith!” It’s a Shiro, one who looks just like the other one, and Keith has no clue what to do, not when one of these people is his soulmate and one isn’t. One of them has been hurting him for months, and one of them has been missing. Keith takes a step backward, and it’s enough to make the Shiro coming toward him stop. “Keith?” He sounds hurt, and the other one still hasn’t moved. Keith doesn’t know what to do, and the rest of the team isn’t doing anything, either. The Shiro directly in front of him looks where Keith is looking, back at the other Shiro, and the team beside him. “Oh. Yeah.”

“How can I be sure it’s you?” Keith’s focused back on the man in front of him, and his voice sounds raw even to his own ears. He’s just thankful it hasn’t cracked yet. “How can I be sure?” Well, never mind about being thankful, he guesses. The Shiro in front of him holds out a hand.

“Here, pinch me, just to be sure you aren’t dreaming.” There’s a smile playing at the corners of his mouth, soft in a way Keith hasn’t seen since Shiro went missing the last time, joke harking back to the day Keith found Shiro in the desert, unsure about how real everything around him was. And just like he did all that time ago, Keith takes Shiro’s hand in his own, pinching the thin skin on the back with his other hand. An echoing pinch stings the back of his left hand.

Keith throws his arms around Shiro’s neck, ducking his head in the space between Shiro’s shoulder and his throat. Shiro’s arms come up to cage Keith in, squeezing so tight but Keith can’t bring himself to tell Shiro that he’s making it a little hard to breathe. Keith pulls back just far enough to kiss Shiro, his Shiro, the one who’s been missing and replaced by someone who looks just like him. There will be time to figure everything out later, will be time to figure out just where Shiro went in that time that he’d been gone, time to figure out what it means that the Galra have perfected cloning. Now, Keith stops kissing Shiro long enough to smile at him, bright and hurting his cheeks, like a smile hasn’t done since they all came to space in the very beginning. Keith’s hand runs down Shiro’s right forearm.

“It’s good to have you back.”


End file.
